The Queen of Everything (33 page)

I opened the door of a store--used books and
records--making the bell bang against the glass. A guy with a long ponytail and
tiny glasses looked up, and I asked him the way to Black Nugget Road. I followed
the map the book guy drew on my hand with an ink pen. The streets in town were
named for trees. After Alder there were houses again--small houses with low
fences and mailboxes along the sidewalk--some painted in wild designs or shaped
like birdhouses. I crossed a bridge with a shaded creek flowing underneath, and
posted with a sign decorated with a leaping salmon, please keep this river clean
, it said. I looked down, thinking I would

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see salmon swimming, but there was only the low
rushing water and shoots of grass along the bank. The creek followed the street;
as I looked back, it appeared to wind its way through town.

I walked past more leaping-fish signs; the
sound of the creek, water burbling over smooth rocks, was a cool, peaceful
sound. The map on my hand said I was close, and I knew it too. This looked like
where Big Mama would live. My stomach was doing as much flopping around as the
fish on those signs.

But I was relieved, too, when I saw the house.
Two-seven-seven. A small white house that needed paint, with a few pots of
geraniums on the porch and a cat lying in a shady spot of the grass. I pushed on
the stuck gate, knocked on the door. I heard the yipping of a small dog inside,
the brave barking of a creature who thought he was more than he was. I waited
for the sound of Big Mama's heavy footsteps. I knocked again.
Nothing.

I had to think about what day it was. It felt
like years had passed since I was at the Beenes' house for dinner.
Big Mama
is just at work,
I told myself. I told myself,
Calm down.
Fatigue and
heat made all the nasty possibilities flash through my head. And truly they
were
all possible--because for all I knew Big Mama was in Oregon visiting
her son Burke or in Montana staying with her daughter, Angela, or in

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Arkansas checking on her aged mother. Two other
sons lived in California. I was just so sure she was going to open that door. So
sure she was going to open her arms so that I could disappear into them for a
while.

Tears were starting to make their shaky way to
my eyes. I sat down on the porch. I folded my arms, lay my head down on them. I
was so very tired.

I thought the sound was in my head. I thought
the long walk and the heat were doing things to my brain same as those guys you
see in the movies who have been walking in the desert too long. But I wasn't
sure if a mirage was something you could hear too. I figured the brain was an
equal-opportunity trickster. The ears or the eyes, whichever was vulnerable
enough to be fooled.

But damn it if I didn't keep hearing it. I
thought a mirage was supposed to vanish once it'd been found out.

I lifted my head. I listened. My sudden
movement made the cat get up and rub herself against my legs.

"Shh," I said to her. She hadn't made a peep,
but her hot fur against my skin was distracting.

"Do you hear that?" I asked her.

She looked up at me. Her
mrow
was
impatient and cranky from the heat.

"I think I'm going nuts," I said to the
cat.

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But I heard it. I did. I stood up, as if that
might help my ears somehow. God, I felt so crazy, but I could have sworn I heard
the sound of bagpipes coming from the direction of the creek. Sweet notes,
lifting themselves on the smallest of breezes.

I pushed open the reluctant gate, and the cat
followed me out, her tags jingling as she trotted behind me. I walked toward the
creek. Stopped to listen.

"It is," I said. "It is." My heart started to
fill. I could feel my own hot tears. I wasn't sure whether I was laughing or
crying. It was all emotions at the same time, fighting for space.
Overcome.

I followed the creek, faster, faster. The cat
had given up and plopped down in a spot of shade somewhere behind me. I was
almost running. But the music stayed slow and calling; he never played the
jaunty, silly songs. No leprechaun jigs for him. Only measured, tender
waltzes.

He stood on the bridge over the creek, leaning
with his back against the rail. When he saw me, Jackson took the pipe from his
mouth.

"I've been waiting for you," he said from
across the bridge.

He set the instrument down with care. And then
I went to him. He cradled my head against him as I cried. Cried with such
gratitude and

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release that I understood--deep as my pain
felt, endless as it seemed, the scraggly hair bent next to my cheek meant there
was always healing.

We sat on Big Mama's porch. Jackson had parked
his truck across the street, and the cat had discovered this new place, curling
herself in the back of the pickup. The bagpipes lay across Jackson's knees. With
Jackson, it was always as if we recognized each other.

The yapping dog inside had given up and
accepted our presence on the porch. Earlier, Jackson had brought out a couple of
bottles of water from his truck and a bag of nectarines. We ate them, licking
the sticky juice that rolled down our arms; the fruit was warm and tasted like
summer if summer could have a taste. Then Jackson rinsed his hands with a squirt
of water. He was careful with that bagpipe.

"This is the chanter," Jackson said. "And the
drones."

He held the pieces in his palm as he said their
name.

"Sounds like the parts of an insect," I
said.

Jackson smiled. "These here are the tenor," he
said. "This long one, bass. And the blowpipe."

Jackson talked about circular breathing and
grace notes and calling troops from battle and lamenting the dead. I confess I
wasn't listening

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much to his words but more to the sound of his
voice, which was soothing. And I was looking at his face. It wasn't sadness that
Jackson wore; more that his eyes seemed to show thoughts he was weighing deep
inside.

"So the bagpipe"--Jackson laughed--"was played
by either the village drunk or the shepherd. He was supposed to entertain, sure,
but he also played to call in his animals and lead them home."

"But why do you play?" I asked.

"Same reasons," he said. And then, "I heard it
when I got lost...." I waited for more, but none came. This time I knew to keep
my mouth shut. I had a feeling that more would come, someday. A mail truck came
down the street. We watched as it stopped in front of Big Mama's house. The
woman inside the truck opened the curved door of Big Mama's mailbox, slid in a
thin slice of mail, and slammed shut the door, which protested with a
squeak.

"Sometimes I think of it like this," he said.
"A piano's keys are like an extension of the fingers that play it." He wiggled
his fingers on an imaginary piano. "Right?"

"I guess so," I said.

"A violin is played with a bow, an extension of
the arm." He curved his arm, put one cheek against his shoulder. "A horn is
round like the mouth that plays it." Jackson looked at me to see if I was
following. I nodded,

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"But a bagpipe," he said. "What is it? This
thing is weird." He patted the instrument on his lap and I laughed. "It's a
jangle of bones, awkward insides. It's played by the mouth and fingers and held
against here." Jackson moved his hand in a circle around his chest. His
heart.

"Awkward but beautiful," I said. "It makes
beautiful music."

"Right," Jackson said.

We watched the mail truck get smaller until it
disappeared altogether around a corner. "Look, I think she's coming," Jackson
said.

He was right. Though to this day, I have no
idea
how
he was right. An old Volkswagen convertible bug, faded yellow
with the top down, chugged toward us. I stood. Calm left and nerves filled me
again. Needlessly, I realized soon enough.

Big Mama pulled up along the curb and slammed
the Volkswagen door, causing the cat to leap out of the back of Jackson's truck.
"I'm coming, I'm coming, get over here, you," she said. She lumbered down the
walk, gave the gate a shove with the palm of her hand, and held out her
arms.

"I told myself this morning, 'Louella, you
ought not go to work today, in case she is coming your way' But I listened to my
mind instead of my soul." She thumped her chest, large and squishy as the arm of
a sofa. "And my mind said

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'Get yourself out of bed and go to work.'" She
gathered me up into a hug and said into my hair, "I figured you were in God's
hands

either way, and if you were coming to me,
you'd

get here."

"I got here," I said.

"And who is this?" she said. "Look what you've
got there."

"This is Jackson Beene," I said.

"Louella Belle." She took his hand in both of
hers.

"Nice to meet you," Jackson said. "But I'm
gonna leave you two alone now."

"No, no. Don't go rushing off. You look hot and
dusty. You can come in for a beer." Big Mama jiggled her keys in the lock. She
opened the door and out sprang a tiny, scruffy dog. "Get in there now, Frankie,"
she said, poking him with her shoe. "Quit with the racket."

"I already made friends with your cat," I
said.

"Oh, that cat is Rhonda and Jay's next door,
but she thinks she's mine. You see her, you tell her to go home. Come on in,
don't mind any mess you see."

Jackson stepped back, away from us. "I'm going
to go now," Jackson said. "But thanks anyway."

"You sure?" Big Mama said. "We didn't even
properly get to know each other."

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I didn't want him to leave either. But Jackson,
well, Jackson was someone who made up his own mind about things.

"I'm sure," Jackson said. "See you." He left
out of the gate, did a jog toward his truck.

"Jackson!" I called. "Jackson!" But the truck
door had already slammed with a clatter, and Jackson started the truck's
engine.

"Thank you," I said.

He put his hand up in a wave, but if he'd heard
me, I couldn't tell.

I took a bath in Big Mama's tub. You have to
let the water run a bit first, to get the rust out, but it felt wonderful to be
clean. And wonderful to be in one of Big Mama's terry-cloth robes so huge I had
to gather it up behind me like a ball gown when I walked. Big Mama made me
dinner. Chicken with fresh rosemary from a pot in her backyard and a tomato
salad and crispy potatoes fried in oil in the oven. Cooking smells, terry cloth,
soap, and linens taken from the cupboard and put on the bed in Angela's old
room; Big Mama was treating me like I was sick, which I guess in a way I was. We
ate dinner while that old scruffy dog Frankie, an afterthought of a dog,
scurried under the table for scraps.

Then Big Mama tucked me in. She actually tucked
me in, making the covers tight around

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me. Then she sat on the bed. The springs
groaned from her weight. She smelled like dinner and outside air. Given the work
she does, her hand was surprisingly soft on my forehead.

"Your mama knows you're here," she said.
"Okay?" Her voice was quiet, as if I were already asleep and she was afraid to
wake me.

"Okay," I said.

"It's good. You did good coming here. You don't
want to be there now."

"Is my dad okay?" At the thought of him, the
real him, not this other him, tears sprang into my eyes. I loved my father. He
was my dad. I couldn't imagine, didn't want to imagine, the hell he was going
through.

"Oh, darlin'," she said. "They're watching him.
They thought he might... Well, he's more desperate than even my
Clyde."

It was starting to get dark in the room. Just
the warm glow from a table lamp that sat on a crocheted handkerchief. The sheets
I lay in were soft from years of washing. I set my cheek on the pillow. Big Mama
kept her hand on my head.

"I've lost him, haven't I?" I
whispered.

"You'll have him different," she
said.

"I lost him a long time ago," I
said.

"Mmmm."

We were quiet a while. Somewhere outside my
window I could hear the jangle of that cat's

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tags as she loped about on the grass,
re-energized by the night, probably leaping to catch mosquitoes.

"How could he do something like that, Mama? I
can't understand it. I just don't get it. I
know
him." Tears rolled down
my cheeks, made my pillow damp.

"Another person's heart is a mysterious place,"
Big Mama said softly. "A mysterious place indeed."

"But how could he do something so awful?
How?"

"To that man? And to you? And to himself and to
his mother? You harm yourself, you harm someone else, same thing, isn't it? Just
where you put your pain."